In a village in southern Chad, the radio lives under the mango tree. It arrived two years ago with a visiting evangelist — a green solar-powered box, fix-tuned to a station broadcasting Bible teaching in the local language. The village chief kept it at his compound, and in the evenings people simply started showing up.
“At first they came because a radio was a novelty,” the partner who distributed it reports. “Now they come because of what it says.” The evening gathering grew from a handful of curious neighbours to more than forty people. When the teaching program ends, they stay to talk about it.
Last dry season, the group asked the station's follow-up team a question the team says it never tires of hearing: how do we become a church? A trained elder now visits twice a month. The radio still plays every evening — same tree, same time.
One radio. One tree. One congregation that did not exist two years ago.